I came up with a silly poem to give my secret Santa teacher pal on our final day, and I just thought I’d share that with you. But please be aware that you can eliminate the religious stanza to make it more adaptable to your Secret Santa.

I’m sure you’re thinking daily

Who sent this stuff to you?

She’s poetic and she’s crafty

Or at least she thinks that’s true

Perhaps you’d like a hint

Perhaps you want a clue

Well brace yourself, it’s coming

That’s what I’m about to do

The first time that I met you

I thought you were a farce

“No one’s that nice,” I said to myself

“She’s faking it, of course.”

How foolish was I, how stupid

To think it wasn’t you

With your sweet smile and clever eyes

And all the kind things you do

You had a secret. I didn’t know

That Jesus was in your heart

Your kindness is a reflection

Of those who stand apart

So now I understand

Your goodness is genuine

I can’t believe I thought you fake

The error is definitely mine

And someday when we’re old and gray

And ready to leave this place

I’ll see you up in heaven

With a genuine smile on your face

Unless they only let Catholics in

In which case I’m outta luck

I’ll wave to you from hell I guess

But that will really suck!

Now, of course, you’ll want to alter some of the words to fit your secret Santa pal. For example, you might want to change “Catholics” to “Baptists” (or whatever religion applies to your secret Pal belongs to). You could even change it to “Unless they only let science teachers in” if the person’s religion is unknown. Also, if the person is not a Christian, just eliminate the “Jesus was in your heart” stanza from the poem, and you’re good to go.

And remember, my sister site is a lot of fun too: https://chellywood.com/ It offers free, printable doll clothes patterns for anyone who enjoys sewing.

In addition to this Secret Santa blog, I also run ChellyWood.com, which offers free, printable sewing patterns for doll clothes and doll accessories. This year, for the holidays, ChellyWood.com is offering this free pattern for a miniature Christmas stocking. So I thought, “Hey! I should share this with my Secret Santa followers too!”

This sewing tutorial shows you exactly how to make the little holiday stockings. Even if you don’t sew, this is an easy project to make. You could probably even use felt and hot glue. (But my tutorial shows you how to make them with a needle and thread.)

What do teachers spend their weekends, evenings, and vacations doing? Grading papers.

The most useful gift you can give a teacher is TIME, because we never seem to have enough of it. But how can you help a teacher grade all those papers without letting the cat out of the bag?

Give your secret teacher pal rubber stamps. Let’s face it, sometimes those papers pile up, and you can’t find enough time to grade all of them. When that end-of-your-rope moment occurs, what you need is a quick easy way to say, “CHECK!”–I graded it.

Here’s a set of Good Job! stamps, selling for $4.00 for four wood-based stamps, on Amazon.

Once you’ve bought the rubber stamps, you’ll also want to buy your teacher pal some ink. Here’s a set with three different colors for $5.85.

There are lots of ways to divvy out your stamps. Give them, one at a time, in a gift bag with other things like candy and pencils. Or wrap each one in a little box with a ribbon and give the stamps as individual gifts. If you buy a set of 10 stamps, you could divide them up and give your secret pal one stamp per gift day, spreading out a $20.00 set so that they become ten, $2.00 gifts.

One last thing: although it’s a little more spendy, here’s a website that offers educational self-inking stamps, youth-group-themed stamps, business stamps, and more. You can have a self-inking stamp customized with your teacher friend’s name on it (great for marking his/her classroom library’s books and other stuff) for $13.95. Imagine giving your secret pal teacher friend a self-inking stamp that says, “This book belongs to Mr. Garcia”. How cool is that? 🙂